


immaculate black

by dreammish



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Let! Akira! feel! things!, Poor tired leader, Stream of Consciousness, Takes place after the end of p5r
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24156217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreammish/pseuds/dreammish
Summary: Akira keeps the glove and wonders how he’ll keep his promise.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 14
Kudos: 140





	immaculate black

Akira’s fingers run along the smooth pebbled leather, tracing the creases left from its previous owner. Deep wrinkles run along the joints of each finger. Akira wonders if Akechi had clenched his fists that often. He smiles, something soft and sad.

Akechi was just another mask in rotation. Principality, Dominion, robes fluttering. Justice in form. He was the same as the others. So why does Akira’s mind keep tracking back to Akechi like a freshly healing wound, poking and prodding at its tender core? 

Akira wonders if it’s regret. 

Sometimes when he prods, the pain feels sharp and bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. Sometimes it softens into an aching regret. Maybe it’s the uncertainty of what sensation he can draw out mixed with a macabre fascination that coaxes him back each time as he turns and turns and turns the sensation over in his mind, throbbing and tender. 

Maybe it’s just a twisted form of penitence. 

His fingers still. After a moment of hesitation, he slips the glove on. It’s a perfect fit. He remembers Akechi’s voice over the phone; they were around the same size. No one would notice if they switched. Most people were oblivious after all.

Kawakami had once said the voice they heard over the phone was only data that they filled in with their own memories. 

He wonders what happens when even the voice itself is only a memory. Just his own mind’s patchwork of memories, thoughts, and emotions keeping the other boy alive. 

Akechi’s voice had been smoothly pleasant. How easily Akira could picture the demure smile that likely curled his lips on the other end, that hid something sharper within.

Akira looks down at the glove, immaculate black coating his fingers. It’s safe inside - treacherous hands hidden away in leather just like when they’re tucked away within the folds of his jeans. Because really, the two of them, they were the same. 

Maybe that’s why he’s the only one who seems unable to move on. 

He used to walk together with his friends, side by side, steps in sync, one large long path stretched out in front of them and disappearing into the horizon.

But circumstances change, and nothing lasts forever. What once seemed boundless must still fold itself within the constraints of society. The Phantom Thieves are retired, and the metaverse gone, relegated to a fading past. Not even they, once society’s saviors, are exempt from time’s unyielding march. 

So their paths diverged, and his friends have spread out on their own journeys. His friends had moved on, had looked to the past and made amends with it, before facing forward once again. He should’ve too.

It’s selfish, he knows, but when Ryuji sends him a picture of his physical therapy session or Ann sends him a link to her latest magazine shoot or Haru a link to an article about the opening of her new cafe, he can’t help but feel like he’s being left behind. 

It’s his own fault, one foot stepping forward with them and the other facing back, as though he were still in the Velvet Room garbed in white and black with the ball and chain wrapped around his ankle, caught between a future and what ifs.

His parents had told him: don’t trust things you can’t see, can’t hold within the palm of your hand. They’d told him as a child when he’d protected another from being bullied and was injured in the process. They’d told him again many years later while he sat in a dim interrogation room, alone.

What’s the weight of a life? 

The glove feels heavy on his hand. 

Maybe, he thinks, it’s because in the faint edges of his heart, he believes if he remains as he is, the memory of Akechi is a little easier to recall. Because it’s here, in the past, where Akechi was real. It’s here that Akira’s mind can fill in the silence with the warmth of one persona and bitter black edge of another.

Akechi had once told Akira to remain as he is, so that Akechi may more surely surpass him. If this version of Akira moves towards the future, does that mean this Akechi disappears as well?

A promise is a promise.

He curls his fingers into a fist, sees the creases in the glove align and fold together perfectly.

He’d received The World. A reminder that he wouldn’t be swayed by the world, that he’d be able to walk forward without hesitation. If Igor and Lavenza still resided in the Velvet Room, would they still say that now?

A wry smile twists his lips. 

How selfless was he, how noble and steadfast and courageous was he to stand against temptation and return the world to its proper form. 

How selfless was he to wrench the other Phantom Thieves from their perfect cognitive realities and thrust them back into the real world where the dead stay. He’d always been the selfless leader. Selfless, selfless, selfless. Unswayed eyes focused on the goal in front of them no matter the sacrifice. 

He stood at the edge of water and peered into its depths. There, he sighted ghosts in motion amongst the living, caught auburn and muddy red, his breath catching as well. How easy it would’ve been to fall in and succumb to this world, let his regrets melt away in this water underland. Didn’t he want this? 

_Stay with me a little longer._

But he was the leader so he ignored the wisps of buried desires that curled around his neck like an albatross and plunged his hand in to rip his team out, one by one. 

And when they thanked him profusely with those earnest and apologetic eyes brimming with gratitude, he smiled and nodded, hid his hands behind his back as they dripped inky red into the tainted pool.

So when Akechi demanded to return to their true reality, demanded him to confirm it aloud, Akira uttered those words. _We’re stopping Maruki._ What was one more selfless act to shoulder?

He held the gun pressed against Akechi’s chest, dark gloved fingers wrapped around his own in a soft embrace, and when Akira pulled the trigger, the only thing he could focus on was that gentle smirk. 

His hands already bled red anyways. 

They’d been right to end the dream world. It was justice. 

Here, alone in his room, he murmurs his desire to the dark glove that envelops his hand. 

_I still want his offer._

But the blue star has long since faded, relegated to the same bottom drawer as the glove, just another knickknack from an increasingly distant past.

 _What a noble sacrifice, what steadfast strength you possess._ He hadn’t wanted the platitudes offered by the man and his attendant who peered at him with sympathetic, inhuman eyes. 

He wants, he just wants…

Why him? Why was it always him? But he’d swallowed the words back down because he knew it wouldn’t change anything anyways. It was too late for that.

For a long while, he’d understood sacrifice as a nebulous concept borne from the cartoons he’d sometimes catch the other students discussing in his hometown. His parents hadn’t ever let him watch them, chastising they were leading kids astray. Righteousness only leads to problems; best to let society’s leaders guide them to the resolution of matters instead. His role was to keep his head down and continue to behave. He understood, didn’t he? He did, he always did.

But sometimes, he’d leaned in a little closer even as he let his eyes trail to the window and listened as his classmates gleefully talked about sacrifice as though it were a virtue. Necessary for justice, but not a worry to be had because in the end, friendship and the sheer force of belief were enough to negate it. Sacrifice would lead to salvation with no bitter side effects.

What they don’t say about sacrifice is how human it becomes. His shone ruby red and honey brown. His cut cloudy red and muted brown. He wasn’t holding the rope when the guillotine’s blade fell but he might as well have been.

What they don’t say is when a sacrifice resurrects itself, there’s no happy ending, only another fork in the road. And when Akira chose the right path with his spectral companion by his side and re-emerged on the other side, alone once again, he had to close his eyes to the twice liberated world and ignore the leaden feeling that he’d chosen the wrong one instead. 

But in the end, his life wasn’t the one that was forfeit. He still remained in this true reality. So what right does he have to act as though he’s the martyr here?

His gloved hand’s beginning to ache so he relaxes his fist. His eyes remain dry, and he wonders if that’s better, if that’s worse. Nothing spills down his cheek, but his smile softens. 

When he hears Morgana’s feet patter towards his room, back from his outside wandering, he hastily removes the glove, slips it back into its protective pouch, and tucks it back within the recesses of his bottom drawer. When Morgana rounds the corner and catches Akira gazing at his phone in crafted disinterest, the cat leaps onto the desk, eyes inquisitive.

“Are you okay?” Morgana asks.

Those blue eyes were always too perceptive.

Akira merely smiles, scratching Morgana behind his ears with his too warm hand, and says nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Mmm so I’m not entirely happy with how this turned out - I think it has to do with the fact that I tend to write in paragraphs / sentences so when I attempt to patch them into a cohesive oneshot I get frustrated 
> 
> But I wanted to get this out there because I know otherwise I’ll just agonize and continue nitpicking forevereverever 
> 
> But anyways I love shuake a lot (sorry again for minimal romantic shuake what’s wrong with me ashskdllsk) - I’ve always been drawn to puzzling akiren out because he’s still mostly an enigma but he! clearly! has! opinions! and! feelings! 
> 
> There will be something where Akira and Goro actually interact... eventually...
> 
> Also I made a vague reference to Robin Hood and Loki - I know technically Akechi gets Hereward but... it was harder to work in so... sorry haha
> 
> Feel free to leave kudos/comments as they always make me (:


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